Indeed, it seems probable that powerful members of the Government
sympathise with the mob. M. de Plehve, Minister of the Interior, had been warned that risings were expected, and secretly forwarded orders to the officials to ex- postulate but not to use arms, and on the llth inst. published a decree forbidding Jews to associate in their own defence. The consequence of the orders was that the Governor, who had ten thousand troops at his disposal in the town, made on the two days named no effort to arrest the orgie of blood and plunder, though he stopped it with a word when he thought it had gone far enough ; that the police looked on without interference; and that messages to St. Petersburg praying for protection were refused transmission. And then men wonder that the ranks of the Nihilists are never completely empty. The only excuse offered by the authorities is that the Jews plunder the people by lending them money at high interest. As the Russian Government have full power to plant all Jews in a separate colony, or even to expel them from their country, as the Spaniards did, their tolerance of what are really acts of rebellion can be explained only on the theory that they hate the Jews as hard as the Russian mob does, and regard them as a people disentitled either to justice or mercy.
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